Ubisoft Explains Splinter Cell, Red Steel Delays

With Splinter: Cell Conviction and Red Steel 2 pushed out of the crowded holiday season--both now due between January 1 and March 31, 2010--Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has explained that the delays stemmed from quality concerns.
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"Red Steel and Splinter Cell are going to greatly benefit from the additional polishing time," he said in a conference call, as reported by Joystiq. "It's just a question of polish...[the teams] asked for more time to be able to come with a better product, for both of those games. The quality of the games is there for what you've been able to see at E3, but we were not able to have that same quality on the full game."

The CEO added that while the two games "will not do as many units for the first month as they would have done in November/December," with an estimated one million sales lost due to the delay, the enhanced "level of quality" should help sell more units long-term.